Splice director Vincenzo Natali wants to make a Swamp Thing movie

Now that SPLICE director Vincenzo Natali will have his sci-fi cautionary tale seen by a wide audience thanks to Joel Silver and Warner Bros., he may have more big opportunities than he’s had since CUBE.

Silver is planning an update of the DC/Vertigo comic SWAMP THING (in 3D, natch), and Natali wants to play with the character. As he tells MTV, “There are two incarnations of Swamp Thing — both of them are quite wonderful. The first one was by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson, which was a more traditional sort of retake on classic, James Whale-style, Universal Studio horror films. Then Alan Moore reinvented the character in the early ’80s, and that’s actually the version that’s a little more interesting to me.”

“It’s a comic book, but it delves into some very interesting stuff, both psychological and philosophical,” Natali says, implying he’d give a more thoughtful take on the sentient vegetation, and avoid the campy tone of the plant elemental’s previous live-action appearances in two movies, a cable series and a short-lived animated show.

Natali also has a couple of other projects in the pipe, including his long-gestating pet project HIGH RISE, based on J.G. Ballard’s 1975 book about a class war in a tenement building, and an adaptation of the recent “kid-friendly horror” bestseller TUNNELS.